


on the delicacy of knife-torn leaves

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 09:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: today marks seven days, since the death of Tuco Ramirezfive since Blondie caught up with you, contemplating the bewildering possibilities of a hundred thousand in goldone since the man betrayed youyou doubt there's many more left
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	on the delicacy of knife-torn leaves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sybilius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/gifts).

"I brought him back for you," Blondie says, kicking your trussed-up body off the cart with the grace of a sack of potatoes. "For you, Pablo Ramirez, because I said I would."

"...even though I asked you not to," Ramirez says, kneeling in the dust besides you. "Leave the man to God's justice, or the law's- not mine. Wasn't the one death cruelty enough?"

Blondie throws his head back and laughs yet again, a soft harsh chuckle that keeps taking him like madness. "Go to the courts in Texas, for a man who killed a Mexican? You know damn well what kind of justice that would be- if it'd just been my partner to think of, I'd never have asked you at all. If Angel Eyes had killed you for the sake of that two hundred thousand, Tuco wouldn't have let anything stop him tracking down _your _murderer." 

"And probably died just the same, as those who live by the sword are wont to do." Soft words, words fitting those clerical robes and the square superstitious necklace hanging around his neck. It's the shifting in the agonised eyes that contradicts the fatherly voice. Nothing of your target's put-on innocence in those black pupils. 

"Since he didn't spend his last words damning you to hell for a coward..." Blondie says, very husky. Stops to wipe the sweat from his face with a corner of twisted poncho. "Only reason I dragged this piece of trash all the way from Tucumcari was to let you watch him die. Any way that takes your fancy, I'll see to it."

That he means it you have no doubt; just as you had no doubt of his sincerity last night, when he was mumbling stupid poetry straight out of McGuffey's in between fire-tinged kisses. The common denominator is not Blondie's reliability, but your own comprehension failing- and maybe it's time enough for a man like you to go, to be caught short by lies as thick as _this. _

"His death in my hands," Ramirez says, the hunger in his face now uncannily like his younger brother's. "You swear to that?"

"On his grave. On mine." 

"...your gun would be too quick," he says, after a time. "But then, a desert death...you came very near having that yourself. Would you condemn a fellow man to such thirst?" 

Blondie doesn't speak, at first. He rolls a cigarillo, and makes the lighting of it take a long time.

"Not for any other man, but for him-"

and the whisper is like your own death rattle. 

**********

Here, then, is the cell prepared for your death. 

It's Ramirez's own, you assume- where else in this monastery could they put you, without patient carers dabbing your sun-burn clean, soothing your parched throat with cool, fresh well-water. For your presence even to be known would render this plot a failure, and perhaps the Father's thinking of that. To have another take the decision away from his. 

Blondie seems to have come to that conclusion too; else he wouldn't be resting in the chair propped against the single door, nodding over his rifle. Its polished stock takes in moonlight, reflects it after the manner of river water....

(the night you took Blondie, _contra bonos mores, _there was light and water enough then. Mingling over your bodies in such careless profusion that neither of you might have named where it started, where it ended. Drowning willingly in starfire, to stare each other down through the rippling haze of current- how it burned you both to swallow, cold and heat unquenchable.) 

"Tell me how it happened," Ramirez says, a pistol at your temple. 

A cheap one, of uncertain execution: and an unnecessary precaution with you so tightly trussed. "Blondie would have told you by now." 

"...Saint Francis help me, do you _want_ to die?" He probes beneath the cot you rest on with his foot; your body arches instinctively, helplessly, at the tell-tale slosh of a wine bottle. He pries out a dirty cork, tastes, frowns. "If you were Catholic, I'd have to offer you last rites. Communion wine. If you weren't..."

You say nothing, as motionless as the desert coyote, and he leans forward to tip half a bottle of wine down your dusty throat. Not even three days of thirst can sweeten these vinegar dregs; but it draws life and quivering voice back into you, the sacrament overflowing past your heart. 

"If I was going to abandon a lifetime's vows, for this," Ramirez says, "I would not leave it to another's hands. Talk quickly." 

There are a thousand ways to explain, to justify, to clarify, all useless. "He asked me to." 

"Now that," Ramirez says, all of a churchman's lofty scorn in his voice, "I don't believe." 

"...Blondie told you about the showdown, yes? He shoots me, blows me backwards into a grave- interesting luck that he only hit my Colt." 

"I thought you carried a Remington?"

"A _professional _wouldn't be caught dead with just one weapon-" and he seems to grasp something of that at least, looks uncertainly at the pistol's muzzle. "Figured I'd lie there awhile and let them finish the job- the best I could expect if they noticed me was digging up yet another grave."

There's laughter at that, if quiet. You're surprised he's capable of it. 

"So they dug it up, split the money in two with Tuco laughing like a child- and then Blondie ordered him to stand beneath a gallows-tree. Knots up a noose and tells your brother to stick his neck in it, then rides away. Just leaves him in the hot sun, struggling madly to stay upright and staring at the fortune in gold at his feet- he was frothing at the mouth, begging for mercy from a man who was already half a mile away. I was close enough for a clean shot, and I didn't hesitate."

"But you could have saved him," Ramirez says, infinitely tired. "You could have cut him down." 

"I could have." 

_Talking won't save you- _well, it hadn't and it won't. Half a bottle of wine can't be enough to turn your blood to liquor, but there's a weariness on you like nothing reasonable. 

(If the priest cut your bonds out of Christian charity, if he gave you a horse and let you go- where would you go, what would you do? What would there be to care about, without even the lure of a fortune to demand your every drop of skill and cunning?)

"Strange, how truth is." Ramirez turns towards Blondie, his back deliberately exposed. "He told me a story that I thought true- that I think is true- and yet there was nothing in it that mattered." 

The sharp singing of a bullet is such a long sound, offensive against the monastery's silence, and yet nobody comes to see the cause. Ramirez is very tidy, the way he mops up the blood with the silver-streaked poncho. 

"...you didn't even think to question my word."

"Maybe you think too much of yourself," and the sardonic ring to the words, that is not in the least like the serene dreams of a cleric. "Maybe there was more than enough proof pointing back at him already- a headstrong thief, a dishonest eavesdropper, a ready killer. A _gringo _who saw one of my countrymen wearing this," Ramirez says, throwing the stained poncho over his own shoulders, "and thought he'd take it as a trophy, with what bloodshed I dread to think. I believe you telling me that there was cruelty in his goodness, just as you found a moment of kindness in your cruelty." 

There is a smile on him, as he begins to assemble the hard-won fortune of coin, more wine, clothing. 

"You're packing, I see."

"...do I look like a priest any more, Angel Eyes? A man of peace?"

He doesn't just at present, but that won't last a week. His rage would do, certainly, but not his gentle habits, not the fussy particularity that causes him to hide the gaping hole in Blondie's chest with a chunk of matted sheepskin.

"Think of it this way, Ramirez, there's still a Confederate regiment out there wanting its gold back. That's a lot of angry men to handle all by yourself." 

"...I could leave it with the monastery." Even as he says it, you can see Ramirez realising that's nonsense. 

"What, and get the place burned down? You want to draw them away from here. You'll want to make a nice loud noise about it somewhere pretty far off, get anybody following on the trail, or there'll be soldiers coming here to turn the pueblo to dust. And to do that, you're gonna need- a partner. Somebody who knows how these things are done. Who'll know where to sell your gold and how to watch your back." 

The smile he gives you is a ghost's, and no quiet ghost either. "Do you always snivel like this? To Blondie, perhaps?"

"Tuco might have told you. I can be very winsome when the other party has something I want." 

"...he did. Yes. Don't think that it's altogether successful," Ramirez says, brandishing your Remington. "But I said that a death by shooting would be too quick for you...and if you should turn the tables, well." 

"Well?"

"Maybe I would welcome that," the priest says. He throws the gun at you, hard enough to leave a scarlet bruise blossoming across the soft flesh of your arm. 

When you don't move to shoot him, he starts cutting your bonds. 

When he's finished, your movements are still cautious. Testing stiff fingers by reaching out, running a hand through his hair as gently as though he were your first lover; and Ramirez must have read his brother's ill-scrawled letters after all, to submit so freely for that tenderness. 

(It is not the same feel as Tuco's, nor quite the same scent; and if Ramirez has notions of maddening you with not-quite-familiar sensations, he may succeed at that.)

"...there was that also," he says at length. "It never occurred to him to take Blondie for a lover, he told me. Too nebulous, too greedily self-absorbed." 

"_Decessit sine prole."_

_"Ex nihilo nihil fit."_

And his absent surprise at the ease of his response, must surely be a match for your own. 


End file.
